[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Hello, everybody, and good evening. Very pleased to speak to you and very proud to be part of this circle.
I would like to inform you that this is a recorded presentation, as I'm on a ship and the connection is not stable enough.
I try to join you by live phone after this presentation.
So when I started to work for Franck Goddio in 1998, I discovered the harbour of Alexandria with a rather romantic idea.
And when I did my first dive, I was really surprised.
I was used to dive in the lakes of northern Germany with bad visibility, I thought.
But Alexandria was really something that was similar, if not much worse from the visibility.
So the first challenge for an underwater photographer over there would be to cope with the lack of visibility,
with the constant change of the elements and the algae blooms and the introduction of human,
sewage, etc. and to be able to make images that are able to talk.
So in the beginning, we had these major objects in the harbour to picture in a way that would be rather iconic and,
give a visualisation to what archaeology can be, a visual idea of what underwater archaeology can be.
Not only from the scientific point of view, and also from the human adventure that it is with the constant encounter with the past.
You are confronted to situations which are sometimes surrealist,
settings which can be just, you know, like a glimpse of a short moment where you just see
a reality that appears only for you as a privileged diver, because these objects are, of course,
not eternal and might be retrieved or researched much more. Then we can see here
the silicone mouldings, which let speak the hieroglyphs.
The method that we use underwater to make these silicone mouldings.
So, the documentation of what's going on is part of my job, my daily job in an excavation.
And also I would say - with the words of Franck Goddio - that's the memory of the mission.
So it's a quite big responsibility to be everywhere and at the same time nowhere.
I mean you would try to pull out of the image and not be present, not do too much personal
interpretation of the situation, but just catch what's happening in the very moment.
This moment with the ring, for example, was quite magic for me
to picture. But it's just a fraction of a second when the picture is really good.
So, that's a lot of trial and error, of course, with the harsh conditions.
But, to resume, the first encounter with the situation in Alexandria for me was like
having a new piece of science to visualise.
What's also interesting are some methods that need to be invented.
For example, we have the stratigraphy, which is really deep. We have to find solutions how to picture it.
And so, basically it's stitched photography that we use to obtain the information. Because as you imagine,
in a small hole like this, the visibility is not very good.
And you cannot have enough space to photograph this kind of information, whith
these archaeological layers that you see here going over 2.5 to 3 metres or even more and to get them in a picture.
So it's stitched photography or mosaic photography, which is a 2D form of photogrammetry.
We will come to that later. So here you see the stratigraphy,
I think from 2010 and it was really a nice situation with that diver holding the decametre.
So what I found also very exciting and fascinating was the proximity of the Corniche.
Sometimes you work like ten metres from the shoreline,
and you have people sitting there and watching you even when you come out of the water.
And just below that, there this antique pavement and just the place.
That was also the occasion to make one of my first photomosaics.
Getting to the Island of Antirhodos. There is a particular image that I would like to share with you, which is the scenery of a priest,
and two spinxes and some columns re-erected where they were found on the pavement of that antique island.
The challenge was to wait for the water to become clear, to set up the whole construction,
I would say, before doing the actual photo, which was done on film.
No digital preview possible. So everything was planned in theory, executed, and then I got the result once I was back in Europe.
Instead of using just normal camera and strobes, the classical underwater photographer's set up, I would separate
the lamps or the strobes from my camera and trigger them over a long distance through cables and
light cells or slave sensors, as we call them.
There was, for example, one first strobe behind that bigger sphinx, shining on the column and
giving at the same time a silhouette to the sphinx, which would be otherwise just drowning in the dark.
Then, just after that column, behind that column,
is the second strobe, which does the same thing, but instead of shining only on the statue,
it will also give a light, a counter light and a silhouette to the standing piece of column.
Then there will be another strobe on the left side which will do the same thing.
Indirectly light and give a silhouette. And then behind the statue I put three strobes to get this counter light effect.
So they're basically shining into the sky towards the camera,
but their light direction is stopped by something in the way before the lens.
So there is no particular flare or something happening.
And the light diffuses very well in the murky water.
So, this was a setup which took a long time.
Of course, you cannot do this for any picture, for everything, but it took quite some energy to put the cables to hide the cables.
Part of it is driven over light sensors, which will just activate the strobe once it gets a light impulse from somewhere else.
But, the initial connection from the camera to the whole setup is with the cable.
And you see, there will be a short description of the length, the distances and the flash output power.
That's only for the geeks who might want to know this, but it was quite a scholar setup of slave and cable connected photography.
So I tried to use the murky water as a kind of light diffuser to create this scene and get depth into the image.
This is a Cleopatra VII coin, and the superposition of maybe 20 coins like that,
which all give the same shape, which is quite interesting.
Here we go to restoration. Restoration is a big part of my job.
Also to visualise the different steps.
What is going on with the artefacts?
Tell it to a general public and also follow the artefacts through their entire story once they are retrieved.
Sometimes it can be very pleasing to follow an object because it completely changes shape.
And sometimes the object loses a little bit of his charm, when you just clean it and it just gets like the average artefact.
The concretion is always something interesting when you find something.
So it can be important to take a picture of the concreted object before restoration.
Studio photography is also one of the jobs here. My two assistants doing one of these catalogue productions.
And I follow these objects from the water
right until the museum, into the exhibitions.
It can turn out to be a real advantage to know the objects from below the sea and from restoration process,
because then you really know how to light them and how to picture them best.
Now we will drive from Alexandria to Aboukir Bay, which is a few hours ride with Princess Duda.
And there we are in the open sea. And it's really different conditions, particularly for underwater photography.
It's rougher.
There are waves, there can be sand storms that are coming, things floating within our excavation area, from the Nile.
And there are these murky waters that can mix spontaneously and change visibility within a few minutes.
So here you see the encounter of clear and murky water, sometimes it rolls in from the Nile Delta,
like a 40 centimetre high wave, just the murky water going over the other, it's also different temperatures.
So we have a thermocline, a chemocline, maybe even with the Nile waters.
And you have the sediments that might come in from the Nile, and then you have seasonal
influences also, which all make it very difficult to predict the visibility that you have.
Generally we can say, in the last years, the visibility has been quite good.
We just come back from a mission where we had no visibility at all for two months, because of dredging work going on.
So it's unpredictable. And the game is still the same:
Play with the murky water, play with the mystery, the foggy situation that we find on the bottom of the sea.
So the walls of Canopus were something we all discovered from 1999 on.
And somehow also a challenge to photograph because it was not a consistent piece that I could picture.
So, as we all know, with the liquefaction events and the "fast clay" how several call it today,
there is dramatic events going on, but there's also some things preserved in a way that you rarely encounter in other situations,
like these footprints of animals that you find there, just as if there would have been there a few hours before you.
So even it's 1.500 or 2.000 years ago.
So here's an image of a Noria under best conditions with a fisheye lens.
So the best you could see, it's only a few metres.
And then we introduced photogrammetry, which is basically stitched photography in order to get more visibility.
We apply this technique to nearly everything today.
And it gives an overview which is neutral, which has the advantage of allowing us to go back in time.
I will have a few words about that later. Here is a TW4 piece of wall, 100m long and 50m in an L-form.
One of the early photogrammetries in 2003, within that area was found the Neilos bust.
Very nice object. And as one of these objects, as I told you before, that I followed for years and rediscovered in the exhibition.
The moment when I saw it in the water was really short and it was really a precious moment.
So even if you do just, you know, a few clicks, but the moment you retrieve an object or you take it out of the water, it's just a change of everything.
The mystery is maybe not gone, but it's different. So an object underwater is still a privilege to discover and to see, as a photographer.
Now you will see a few situations and images from excavations that should talk for themselves, and I just let them roll without comment.
So in 2014, there was a very particular meteorological event which caused clear water and visibility.
Incredible, maybe a bit low temperature, but there was nearly ten metre visibility and we were in Canopus.
That was really spectacular. And I used that to photograph nearly anything I could in a few days.
For example, this big column, which is about six metres, the longest found in Canopus, you will see the advantage of photogrammetry here.
You just get it all in one view, what you don't see in classic photos, and you have the neutral perspective.
So that is one thing that we develop currently, in a very aggressive way, using photogrammetry.
The beginnings of Thonis-Heracleion and the discovery was a shocking event for me.
I first thought these statues are artefacts of a robbery that fell from a ship,
but no, we soon discovered that there was a sunken city below, and it was a challenge to capture these early moments because things
were just found in situation and cleaned a little bit to be able to identify.
Like here, the Hapy statue lying face down and then, being puzzled
to find pieces that go together and things that might be in relationship before lifting them.
So, they then decided to bring a big barge, I think like a 500 square metre floating barge,
to lift all these new colossal statues, etc. that appeared to be lifted.
And that created very interesting situations because we had these statues being assembled first under the water due to the light weight,
it's much less dangerous and better for the artefact to see how it fits together under the water before being lifted to that big platform.
And that was also the occasion for this particular picture, which is my favourite of the Sunken Cities project.
With Hapy standing in the dark and watching us divers like: "Hey, what are you doing to me?
What is it I am to expect from you now?"
Or looking to the surface, to a new future, to a new life because that statue has travelled the world with the others.
There were some key moments for us as a team to be documented and also some very,
exciting decisions to be taken fast, in order to dispose the objects correctly on the barge.
At that time, there was no drone or so. Here for example, you will follow the story of this stela,
the stela from Heracleion, the big stela, and you follow an object, you assemble it in the water.
Divers try to find the missing pieces.
And during the mission, the pieces were assembled on that barge, and also the colossal statues.
So finally it became like an image that was constructed. An image that
we were not knowing when we started it, how this could be later, in the final result.
So there was this puzzle on the barge going on. And I remember the last day Franck told me, you must shoot this now because we have good conditions.
And I went up on this old swinging crane in the morning, low sun.
And then we shot these pictures on the platform.
And it was magic.
It was really a very good souvenir at the end of the mission to have succeeded in getting the big picture. And yeah,
then following an object like, for example, of that stela, first contact with the public.
And then this travel from Aboukir to the place in Alexandria where the objects would be watered.
With some trucks. That was a memorable event
also, to get from Aboukir to Alexandria and then the watering. That's all shot in one day.
Just the whole procedure from getting the objects from the ship into the storage. And then begins a whole new chapter,
which is totally separated from the sea, from divers and also from the photographer. Because sometimes I won't see the object for years.
Then comes an exhibition project and the stuff travels to Europe and just see it in a well lit environment and a vitrine,
and it's all very clean around,
and you can just look at it from every side and you don't need a clark or a crane to move things around to see them from all sides.
So that's quite a magic to rediscover the objects in the exhibition.
And which was also the occasion, regularly, for some documentation imagery
of the whole museographic work that has been done around these objects.
So finally, when you discover the objects in the exhibition,
that can bring up memories, but also, makes you understand how short are these moments that we
discover them under the water and how much we don't know when we are down there, when we discover an object.
I speak for myself, I mean, I have to photograph objects sometimes, as they are where they are without really knowing,
where to emphasise and what's so important because it's just new.
So that's a little bit the challenge that comes with the object.
So let's get back to Thonis-Heracleion in the Bay of Aboukir where Franck is waiting for us on Princess Duda.
It's a place where throughout the years, there's some iconic imagery,
which resumes a little bit the adventure of underwater archaeology and the magic moments.
And one of the magic moments is when an object comes out of the clay, because it's very often perfectly preserved.
And if you see this oil lamp, for example, the smoke, this is just floating clay that comes out of the lamp.
And so it's literally smoking and it comes alive.
For me, this is like a magic picture, but it's not 100% planned.
This is also something with a lot of luck. There's some situations during the excavations where the magic really acts immediately.
Here you have a group of coins. A monetary treasure, and you have the diver retrieving pieces of it that are stuck together, putting it in a bag.
And this is also the occasion to have some hints to, you know, what we all imagine about treasure and so on.
But the real life of coins only starts once they are on the boat and ordered and cleaned.
And then when it goes to numismatic inquiry.
The excavation methods and actions also can give
some images and some situations which document a little bit the hard piece of work which is underwater archaeology.
And it's maybe something that few of us know, but it's a very delicate operation.
And it's centimetre by centimetre. It is not just sucking away the sediments.
Those of you who dive and who have done digs all know it, but it's a delicate procedure.
And every square metre that is uncovered is hard work.
And I try to be a witness of that and also do a correct image of the final excavation and conserve something of the work of my colleagues,
which is an important achievement, I think, in any excavation that we do.
Getting to the objects during excavation, having them in their original situation, is a particular challenge.
Because it stops the operation very often when they have to wait for the photographer.
So again, you have to be everywhere and at the same time nowhere.
It's a very short moment when an object is discovered, and very often it needs to be retrieved because it's just for the sake of the object.
And several objects are restored on board.
Let's look at this Aphrodite statue, for example, before and after.
And the state before is only preserved through photography, otherwise it would be lost.
We still go to work with normal cameras and a compass at hand and walk over the seabed.
So what about the future of underwater photography?
I believe it will become more and more important.
This is a classic set up, the tripod with a panoramic camera.
This is how to photograph an object on a grid. If you would go vertical,
you would then shoot a mosaic, maybe.
Nowadays, we do it digital and with overlapping images and computer software, we get to 3D models that we can then explore in 2D or 3D.
And this is basically what I apply to most of the recent excavations in the Nile Delta.
This wreck 43, ship 11.
And now we see the scooter camera that I used for the mosaic of ship 11.
Set up of an underwater propeller with a camera and some strobes.
This is shot on wreck 17, and there will be a short film by my colleague Roland Savoye, who photographed me during mosaicking the wreck 17.
So you can see the really bad conditions that we had, and this is rather good.
So I would say this was filmed on a good day. There are several lines I would either swim or do with the scooter,
and change the distances in order to have different resolutions available for calculation,
if it's a smaller object. If it's a big object, I cannot allow myself to do several trials or so.
It's just a one-off. So this is a short clip that I made from H1, two excavation campaigns in 2015 and 2016.
And you can see what photogrammetry can do.
It's just getting three dimensional information about a site, preserved for posterity.
And I think, this is also what we will see more and more in the future by terms of virtual fieldwork,
to be able to virtually dive on these locations and look much more in depth than we might have the time to do when we are underwater.
Thank you very much. I'm now available for questions.
That's a fabulous presentation, that shows the great history of the excavation with images that I've never seen before of some of them.
So thank you very much. My first question, though, is has your job
as a photographer got more difficult as we've moved into the sort of the digital age or do you think it's just changed a little.
It has changed a lot. I mean, before I could take 3 or 4, sometimes 5 housings and double quantity of strobes into the water.
But then there was only one film per camera and that was it.
So, in the first years, I had to wait really to see the results, for after the mission, after developing in a serious laboratory.
And then we developed on location also, it was much more magic.
I don't think that the way of making images has changed,
but nowadays a photographer is also like a graphist, of course we do this,
photogrammetry, which is also micro bathymetry, which is also cartography, which has a lot of information plus than before.
So, but at the same time, I think that's a good challenge. It gives also another sense to photography, more than just the subjective image.
So it has to become a technology that is, I would say, indispensable for the daily work.
Yeah. And do you think that therefore, as we move more towards photogrammetry, do you think some of the art has gone out of photography,
or do you feel that there is still room to create those amazing images?
There's still room. Yes. Of course. And, now is the advantage that
you can see a little bit. You can experiment. You can see underwater what is going on. But still,
sometimes I regret the days of film because it was just a little bit more tickling when you,
you know, you shot and you had to really think about what you were doing.
Now it's a little bit more free. You can experiment. You can, you know, also do the impossible.
That was not possible on film. And sometimes you just stop when the memory cards are full, or when the batteries are empty or when the tank is empty.
That rarely happened before. You had 35 images,
36 or 37 on one film, five cameras, you could get to something like, 150, maybe 200 pictures in a dive.
And that was much. And now you can can go up to 5,000 if the equipment is in consequence.
So it's totally different from the perspective and the options and the freedom of action.
So you have to limit yourself to what's really reasonable and what is needed for the job.
Absolutely. Does does anybody else in the audience have questions that you might have for Christoph.
Sorry. I was asking you if anybody in the audience have the questions for you.
Okay. There seems to be nobody at the moment.
So in that case,
sorry, there is Linda. Would you like to..
Hi Christoph, can you hear me? Yes.
When photography was introduced into archaeology, a long time ago,
it was assumed that it would give a more neutral and objective view of the excavation process.
In a way that drawing wouldn't, because drawing has to be interpreted.
But it seems to me that the advantages of what you do also carry those same
limitations in that you are constantly adjusting for different conditions.
How much do you think you are interpreting even the most sort of
working shot of a ship, for instance.
And how much can you say it is actually objective record given problems with visibility, for example?
Could you just repeat the last 20s I was cut?
I'm not sure what the last 20s are, but I think it's.
For instance, I'm thinking of a... It's about that interpretation.
You asked me if this technology gives us space for interpretation.
Yes. And does it reduce the objective quality of the image?
Given that you have to change it to mitigate the problems of differing visibilities, for example.
Yes, of course, I adapt and I try to find like a common denominator for a colour code.
The water colour changes constantly.
And sometimes the question is, is it better to have a totally green image, or do I try to find the initial colours?
And if you call that an interpretation, I would say that's the advantage of using the technology to get to a more informative result.
But I would say the subjective view is always there as soon as you take your camera.
Not so for photogrammetry, because that's totally mechanical.
Of course, the result is heavily depending on the quality of the work
in the water. I would say, how to move, how to take the pictures in which angle,
which distance, which speed, and also to take care about your own behaviour.
when you're on the site, you know, by means of swirling sediments, etc. and, to the strategy how to integrate this into the arch...
I think the phone signal has gone out to Christoph.
So just give him a moment the logical process by means of not stopping too much
the progress of the excavation when there are no divers.
Do you hear me? You cut out there for a little while.
Yeah. Sorry. So I think there's always an interpretation for a single image.
It's just a question of what you consider interpretation.
I mean, colour correction yes. But this new technology, of course, is a big advantage, particularly in northern Egypt, where we see nothing.
And it's really the tool to make us, myself included, discover what we are working on since years and how this looks.
It wouldn't be possible without taking any technological possibility that the digital world offers us.
So we are really using everything. And I told it in the presentation, aggressively, I mean, Franck has his map in the morning,
and can tell the divers just where to continue, because it's from the last day before.
So it's less than 24 hours. And I think that's really a wonderful way of working.
To follow the progress of the excavation for everybody.
Also the working divers included, because when they work, as you certainly know,
sometimes they don't see very much of what is happening around, so this is a big advantage for everybody.
So no question.
Of course, the the job has become wider, more complicated, more time-intensive yeah, but that's like everything.
I think it changes with the ongoing technology.
Certainly your space on the boats has been increasingly filled up over
the years with with bigger and bigger and bigger and more powerful computers,
as we've gone along. When you get into the water,
are you always looking for to go back to the kind of the artistic side of it?
Are you always thinking of that as an image or do they sort of, you know, just how much planning I suppose I'm going with here,
because the images of the sphinxes and the priest from the temple of Isis,
you know, clearly there was an enormous amount of preparation that went on there.
And so when you're diving, you're always thinking, right, what is the next really good kind of public shot that I can create?
Or is it a much more kind of organic experience than that?
Yes, it is definitely organic. Of course, we have priorities of some objects and some parts of the excavations.
But over the years, there's so many images that I wouldn't like to make again.
They're all already made. I mean, these initial images were very important.
Also give a taste and, you know, an odour to underwater archaeology, which is just beyond objects.
It's just the, you know, that was a big challenge.
But nowadays, I think the challenge is to to use photography in a way that allows to see things that we cannot see normally without photography,
it can happen to... Okay.
...I think is not suitable for photogrammetry.
But if I see the water is clear and I have the excavation, of course, then I go back to the artistic thoughts, you know.
I think we missed part of that answer, Christoph. I think the boat drifted out of internet range slightly.
Well. Thank you.
Does anybody else have have questions?
Well, if not, I'd like to say thank you very much for this.
I realise that it's always difficult to kind of find the time to, especially when you're on a project,
you must be incredibly busy at the moment as you're, you know, ten miles offshore.
But so I'm really grateful that you could do this for us tonight, and I'm sure the people,
that are listening to this, will thank you as well for what has been an absolutely fabulous presentation.
I've really enjoyed looking at these truly iconic images again.
So thank you very much, Christoph.